The Heart Hurts
by Cheer-The-Underdog-On
Summary: Roxas and Axel can't be together, but that doesn't stop Roxas from writing letters from Wyoming. Slight Western!AU.


**Written for ectoturntechbiologist due to her request for a fic based off Sad Beautiful Tragic by Taylor Swift. THIS IS _NOT _A SONG FIC.**

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Roxas was heading back to Wyoming from Texas this week. He was taking the Greenway line all the way up to Cheyenne and catching a lift with an old friend to Casper. He had written to Axel a letter in his familiar sloppy mix of print and cursive. The paper was a bit bent at the edges, the redhead had noted, probably from Roxas writing it on the back of his knee while in a pickup truck. The older man had received it in Denver a few days before he'd come into town.

_I'd love to see you if you want to call me up._

The blond had waited.

And waited.

But by the time he was at the tracks, his cellphone hadn't rung and he was hopping the train heading north.

_October 3, 2013_

_ Dear Axel, _

_ I think of you often; I know you haven't seen me since that summer long ago, but please write me. Today I jumped a train to Wyoming, and what a mistake that was! I didn't have a coat yet, and it's colder up here than my ex-girlfriend's heart! I'm kidding. The antelope up here are plentiful. I would say there's more antelope than people in Wyoming! If you feel like it, you should come hunting with me. We both know I make the best beef jerky this side of the Rockies! _

_ Love yours and forever,_

_ Roxas _

_ P.S: Attached are some photos and my new mailing address._

Sure enough, Axel found a few pictures, several were hand drawn, of the scenery of open fields and a few of the wildlife. There was one of Roxas with him and his dog, Fox, both seeming extremely pleased in front of a load of hay. Throwing the letter and its mangled envelope onto the table, he tried to not let the gnawing in his chest become too loud.

The blond was seven years younger than him resting at the fresh age of twenty; while Axel was twenty-seven, an experienced oil worker and recently honorably discharged from the army. Maybe if he was one of those hippie types that lived in Boulder would this sinful love have been okay, but their infatuation with each other was wrong. He'd grown up in Oklahoma, and if the Bible Belt had taught him anything, it was that such things must be put aside in order to be right with God.

So why was he so stuck on him?

Every time he saw a young man with blond hair and blue eyes, his pulse would race, and he couldn't help but think of that long summer in Texas that Roxas and him had spent together. Roxas had barely been eighteen. Just by a few weeks, and he was the Manager's son, but that hadn't stopped the two of them then. Any moment the redhead had off from that backbreaking work, they'd slipped off together and he would claim that sun kissed skin with marks of love. Even the thoughts now made him bite his lip and almost cry. His chest was so hollow from loneliness.

There was nothing stopping him from going up there either. He had a break coming up. He could write the other. Visit.

Each time he put pen to paper, though, he choked.

What would people think? What would they say?

Roxas was so bold and audacious. He signed his letters with 'Love yours and forever'. All of them were declarations of his love, and each one, Axel refused to answer and simply tucked them away in the shoe box he had underneath his bed.

Until he got the one a week later,

_October 10, 2013_

_ To my Axel,_

_ This is the last time I write you, love. My heart will always have feelings for you, but hopefully one day the wounds can be soothed by another person's touch. I hope you find someone who does the same for you. _

_Love,_

_Roxas_

_ P.S. The ring you gave me will be coming back in the mail shortly._

When the ring arrived, the redhead thought of all those soft kisses and conversations shared outside in the humid air. He thought about how good Roxas looked in his swim trunks as they had swam in the murky water and how he'd held him after their first time. There were their rough times near the end, when Axel had informed Roxas he was leaving for Colorado, and he couldn't come with him.

But that had been his fault. He missed him.

Writing the first response back to the other he had ever made, he scrawled out with painstaking thought:

_October 11, 2013_

_ Roxas, the only man I've ever truly loved,_

_ What we had, I will forever cherish. My leaving you was my greatest mistake. You are beautiful. I hope I haven't left your heart with pains that can't heal._

_Visit me next time you're in Denver,_

_Axel_

In the following weeks, he didn't hear back from the other. He hadn't expected to. Roxas probably hated him. He'd probably cried over him too many times, and thought to himself, 'Axel and his selfish ways, fuck him. Fuck him.' But anything, even harsh words, would have comforted the redhead. He hadn't expected anything.

But somehow, with or without a response, Roxas' choice still hurt.

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**I really like writing western Akuroku -w- Please review if you like. Layla betaed.**


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